Archive for August, 2012

Adam Barrows is a Professor in the English Department at Carleton University in Ottawa. The focus of his research for the last eight years has been the relationship between time, literary modernism, and imperialism. His background is in the history of science and his theoretical approach to literature is largely historical materialist, drawing heavily on the Western Marxist tradition, from the Frankfurt School to Raymond Williams and Henri Lefebvre.

Growing out of his interest in twentieth-century British literature he recently led a seminar on the Hogarth Press, as he puts it “one of the most important venues for the production and dissemination of the experimental writings that would come to define the modernist literary canon. Their express purpose was to enable the publication of works that would otherwise never have found a home in the conventional publishing industry, including their own.

In addition to publishing such central works of literary modernism as T.S. Eliot’s Poems (1919) and The Waste Land (1923), Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922) and Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude (1918), the Hogarth Press was also committed to the publication of radically dissident anti-imperialist works such as Leonard Woolf’s own Imperialism and Civilization (1928), Lord Oliver’s The Anatomy of African Misery (1928), Edward John Thompson’s The Other Side of the Medal (1925) and C.L.R. James’s The Case for West-Indian Self Government (1933).”

We met recently to talk about Virginia and Leonard Woolf and the history and output of the Hogarth Press. Please listen here:

The Bayeux Tapestry is a magnificent work of art, unquestionably. It also documents a version of history, and, if you think about it, shares qualities with the movie/TV story board, the comic strip and the graphic novel. With the latter in mind, I have no qualms about adding the museum that houses it to Literary Tourist’s database of literary destinations.

Due to a change in our personal circumstances it is with deep sadness and regret that we must inform you all that we will no longer be running the KandABooks bookshop from the middle of September 2012.

If you have any credit with us then please do ensure that you come and see us to use it up before then. If you are interested in taking over the running of the shop then please get in touch with us on 633 822 614.

It is a great opportunity for someone who loves books, loves talking about books and also loves meeting and talking to people from all over the world. We would like to thank everyone who has been involved in the shop in one way or another and to our customers who have provided us with some great laughs over the years.

Love and hugs, Kelly and Andy. KandABooks.

KandABooks is unique in Valencia in that it is the only international second-hand book shop in town. We have books in all major European languages and some others too.

Several days ago I learned about an extraordinary program called the Youth and Philanthropy Initiative. According to the website, each year thousands of secondary school students participate in the initiative, the signature program of the Toskan Casale Foundation. Since 2002 at Royal St. George’s College in Toronto, YPI has engaged hundreds of schools worldwide, across Canada, United States, England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

It’s mission is to provide secondary school students with real, hands-on experience through a course which gives them the skills to assess the needs of their community and make grants to grassroots, community based charities that meet these needs. The course empowers young people to participate in the development of their communities, engaging them as dedicated problem solvers and volunteers. The initiative “promotes a sense of responsibility, respect and a commitment to building compassionate communities”.

During the past ten years YPI has granted over $6 million in funding across Canada alone, and continues to grant approximately $1 million each year on behalf of participating YPI students.

I can’t think of a better time or place for a rich family looking to unleash some love on the country, to step forward and save the organization. It would have to be a big gift, in the range of say $100 – 300 million. Lilly/Poetry Foundation territory. Such a gift would best have strings attached to it: strictly for the acquisition, and contextualized presentation to Canadians and the world of original source documents and materials.

Given the gaping holes that currently exist in these areas of responsibility and the absence of any decent physical exhibition spaces or public programming in Ottawa or across Canada, filling such needs would guarantee whomever decided to meet them, not only with the deep gratitude of most thinking Canadians, but also significant, tangible recognition – immortality you even might say – in the form of named buildings and collections, monuments even, for example – and the knowledge that this contribution will go far toward doing something for Canada that is incalculably important: rescuing its collective memory from oblivion.

Erskine Caldwell, author of Tobacco Road (Scribner’s Sons, 1932 – see above), ran a bookstore in Maine with his wife, photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White; when he needed time to write, he would take a bus from “Boston to Cleveland maybe, and get off at night once in a while to write. I’d do a story that way in about a week’s time. Then for a while, I took the night boats between Boston and New York. The Fall River Line, the New Bedford Line, the Cape Cod Line, all going to New York at night. The rhythm of the water might have helped my sentence structure a little; at least I thought it did.”

The executive, council and membership of The Bibliographical Society of Canada / La Société bibliographique du Canada (BSC/SbC) are gravely concerned that recent and planned cuts to public services, collections management, and staffing at Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (LAC/BAC) will leave this federal agency in a position where it can no longer meet its legislated obligations to Canadians. For this reason, we strongly recommend that, as an elected member of the Parliament of Canada, you ensure that the cuts proposed – or already initiated – do not transgress Parliament’s obligations under the Library and Archives Canada Act.

Canada’s documentary past is the collective heritage of all Canadians. In consequence, the health of LAC/BAC falls within the purview of all Members of Parliament, and not solely that of the Minister of Canadian Heritage to whom LAC/BAC officials report. Indeed, Members of Parliament would be falling short of their fiduciary obligations were they not to scrutinize the implications of recent and planned budget cuts at LAC/BAC. Until Members of Parliament have had an informed debate about how budget cuts will be managed so as not to undermine the collection and preservation of, and access to, our national documentary heritage, Parliament is not performing as it should. Without a full and detailed disclosure of the cuts (we understand that LAC/BAC has yet to submit its budget to the Parliamentary Budget Officer despite a request that it do so) and investigation of their potential consequences, the Parliament of Canada will not be in a position to make an accurate and informed judgment of the implications of these budget cuts to LAC/BAC.

LAC/BAC is a national institution accountable to all Canadians. The Library and Archives Canada Act (2004), which merged the institution’s venerable predecessors the National Archives of Canada and the National Library of Canada, imposed significant obligations to collect and preserve Canada’s documentary heritage, and to make those materials accessible to all Canadians. LAC/BAC was also legislated to provide leadership in “the development of the library and archival communities.” The BSC/SbC, an organization whose membership is deeply committed to studying and disseminating knowledge about the history of Canada’s documentary heritage, is of the conviction that shifts in policy at LAC/BAC in recent years, coupled with recent and planned budget cuts, leave the institution in a position where it will no longer be able to fulfill its legislated obligations to the people of Canada.

LAC/BAC is Canada’s equivalent to the British Library or the US Library of Congress. The institution houses a vast array of published and unpublished documentary materials related to the history of Canada. These materials run the gamut from books, newspapers, and magazines through photographs, films, videos, art, maps and sound recordings to the records of government, organizations and private individuals. Building these holdings has been a painstaking effort that dates back more than a century. Some collections held at LAC/BAC run into the hundreds of thousands items, others into the millions. These documents illuminate Canada and its development in a multitude of ways, and serve as the raw materials out of which the chroniclers and storytellers among us build our collective memory. Failure to provide the resources to collect, protect, or provide access to Canada’s documentary heritage in an effective and sensible manner suggests a betrayal of the legislated obligations of the Library and Archives Canada Act, and of the trust that Canadians bestow when they elect individuals to serve as members of the Parliament of Canada.

A prominent and obvious example of the failure to meet obligations resides in the decision to abolish LAC/BAC’s interlibrary loan service in 2013. Interlibrary loan is a fundamental method of providing Canadians throughout this vast country with access to significant portions of their documentary heritage, without regard to their physical location or their economic circumstances. The decision to eliminate the service is shocking and, indeed, incomprehensible to those of us who are committed to the ideal of democratic access. Should the retired family history researcher living on a small pension and residing in Kelowna be denied access to microfilmed records that once could be ordered from LAC/BAC through his public library? Will the student based in Saint John be forced to change her thesis topic because several key books she needs are only available at LAC/BAC, and she hasn’t the time or money available to make a trip to Ottawa? Will scholars teaching at universities across the country only be able to access important research materials held at LAC/BAC between May and August because the rest of the year their teaching schedules limit their ability to travel to Ottawa?

Even those who can visit LAC/BAC in person will meet new challenges to access. In the past, onsite reference and consultation services were readily available. Today, the opportunity to consult with librarians and archivists is by appointment only and subject to restricted hours. So, while most Canadians can walk into their municipal public libraries and count on in-person reference services and research support from a professional librarian or archivist, we can’t expect the same level of service or professionalism from the national institution legislated to serve all Canadians. Staff at LAC /BAC is to be reduced by 20 per cent, a cut that will leave important collections of private papers – such as those related to Canada’s literary, musical, Aboriginal or multicultural heritage – bereft of dedicated archivists. As a result, even when researchers make an appointment, the level of expertise they can expect from LAC/BAC staff will be reduced. Reduction in the number of archivists and archival assistants will also inhibit the speed at which collections are processed for public use, and the rigour with which preservation practices are applied to them.

On LAC/BAC’s website and elsewhere, the institution’s officials have rebutted stakeholders’ concerns about access and preservation with assurances that the institution is embracing a new model of service that emphasizes online delivery of services and digital access to holdings. Canadians experienced in working in libraries and archives are not reassured. Indeed, these assurances are worrying since they suggest a lack of basic knowledge on the part of the highest officials assigned to preserve and provide access to our documentary heritage. How will LAC/BAC be able to deliver a printed work in digital form if that work’s still under copyright, and it would transgress copyright to reproduce it in an electronic form? As for archival holdings, it should be obvious that the sheer volume of materials and the financial constraints inherent in digitization of such records will inhibit how much material LAC/BAC can realistically place online.

Digitization is an expensive and complex business, so how can officials at LAC/BAC plan to make digitized versions of its vast holdings the primary method of access? Do members of Parliament realize that the current cost for even one high-end scanner suitable for digitizing archival materials is about $100,000? Then to mount items on the web requires the additional expenses of meta-data creation, custom programming, web design work, and storage and maintenance over the long term. All of these aspects of digital reproduction come with labour costs. Presumably efforts in this direction will also be hampered by the institution’s planned 50 per cent reduction in staff in its digitization office. So, just how many decades of dedicated effort do LAC/BAC officials have in mind when they talk about digitizing the institution’s holdings?

Another pressing concern related to digitization is the following assertion among LAC/BAC’s listing of “Modernization Innovation Initiatives”: “Up to now, most of the descriptions of LAC holdings were written by archivists and librarians. These descriptions, known as metadata, will be done by creators, donors and users.” Every Member of Parliament should be deeply disturbed that LAC/BAC officials are willing to compromise the integrity of record keeping of Canada’s documentary heritage by having people untrained in archival or library practices do the major and fundamental work of writing official descriptions. Such an action will inevitably produce records of uneven quality, detail, and accuracy. To propose or condone an approach so lacking in professionalism demonstrates tremendous contempt for Canada’s documentary heritage.

The impact of reduced staff (through layoffs or failure to replace those who have resigned) is already evident in a break down in record keeping at LAC/BAC. The New Book Service on the institution’s website, which is supposed to be updated monthly, is presently showing February 2012 as its current month. This service is the key method by which researchers are able to identify new Canadian titles, and is a particularly vital resource for tracking works issued by Canada’s small presses or self-published by Canadians since such data may not be captured elsewhere. In addition, researchers utilizing Amicus, the national library catalogue that LAC/BAC is responsible for maintaining to a high standard, report that the database’s records are not being updated as the status of books shift from pre-publication to published status. We also have anecdotal reports from researchers that the physical locations of archival materials are not being updated in LAC/BAC’s internal database when they are subject to relocation within storage areas. If that situation is allowed to continue, portions of our documentary heritage will end up misplaced – and therefore inaccessible for consultation – for years.

The BSC/SbC also has concerns that LAC/BAC is not meeting either the collection or leadership roles expressly assigned to it under the Library and Archives Canada Act. Collection practices for several years have been passive – for a time, there was even a moratorium on purchasing and donations, a strange policy for a national library and archives to adopt, and one which met with criticism from stakeholders at the time. Antiquarian booksellers who have identified special documentary heritage items specific to Canada – significant books and papers that would have been purchased by LAC/BAC or its predecessors in the past – report being rejected, or re-directed to other libraries and archives in Canada. Presumably this practice is tied to the new collaborative, decentralized model of documentary heritage collection being articulated by the institution’s officials as part of its “Modernization Innovations Initiatives.” The “holdings review” noted among those initiatives also raises the spectre of possible de-accessioning of what’s already held in LAC/BAC’s collections. Stakeholders in LAC/BAC do not see these actions as examples of good collections management.

Moreover, while on the one hand LAC/BAC has publicly professed a desire to move toward a more “collaborative model” of collecting and preserving Canada’s documentary heritage, on the other it cut entirely the National Archival Development Program. The modest annual budget of $1.7 million devoted to this program supported local archives and their initiatives in communities small and large throughout the country. Projects and staff have been eliminated at provincial and local archives as a result of this decision. In the view of stakeholders, this decision exhibited neither leadership nor a collaborative sensibility.

Is Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada still living up to its legislated mandate? In the view of the executive, council and members of the BSC/SbC, the answer is a definite no. Should you probe the issue further, I think you’ll find that many other organizations and individuals from across the country feel the same.

Librarians, archivists, historians, genealogists, and many other stakeholders have been registering their concerns about the cuts with the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and their local MPs, but so far to no avail. Indeed, one MP responded to one of our members quite dismissively with the comment: “Library and Archives Canada operates at arm’s-length from the Government under the directions of the Librarian and Archivist of Canada. As such, it is responsible for its operational decisions including the implementation of Budget 2012 decisions.” To this MP I would respond: LAC/BAC is the result of an Act of Parliament. If LAC/BAC’s officials are instigating budget cuts that place the institution where it can no longer meet its legislated obligations to Canadians, then every Member of Parliament should be taking notice of the situation, and acting to change it.

In your capacity as a Member of Parliament, I prevail upon you to see that the Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore ensures that the budget cuts associated with LAC/BAC be fully disclosed to Parliament by the Librarian and Archivist of Canada, an action which will place the Parliament of Canada in a position to study and debate the proposed cuts, and to determine whether it must intercede in order to ensure that the institution continues to meet its legislated mandate to collect, preserve and provide access to Canada’s documentary heritage on behalf of all Canadians.

I would also recommend that a deputation of MPs representing all parties meet with stakeholders whose overriding concern is to see Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada live up to its mandate, and perhaps even exceed it, as we move forward into the 21st century. As president of the The Bibliographical Society of Canada / La Société bibliographique du Canada, I would be pleased to facilitate such a gathering in the near future.

WHAT is this life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass,Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth canEnrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare.

If you want to take up necro-tourism, where do you begin? That depends on whether you want to walk classic tourist trails or if you prefer to create fresh itineraries. Traditionalists may want to begin with an old book like T. P. Grinstead’s Last Homes of Departed Genius (1867), evidence of an earlier generation’s eagerness to learn more and more of the homes, haunts, and graves of its eminent poets. But more modern resources are at hand. If you are curious about the burial place of a particular writer, you can try visiting findagrave.com, a site where users can locate the dead, find photographs of headstones, and even leave virtual flowers. If you have no specific destination in mind, a search-engine spin on “literary graves” will turn up all sorts of results, with enthusiasts ready to recommend their favorite excursions. The Literary Tourist website’s own list of literary landmarks includes good suggestions. Some tourists visit graves for their natural settings as much as for their occupants—they may prefer country churchyards or lonely graves in the mountains. Others look for sites with quirky stories. The two graves of Thomas Hardy, for instance—one in Dorset containing his heart, the other in Westminster Abbey containing his ashes—provoke stimulating (if morbid) conversations.

If your goal is economy, you can go to the locations of concentrated memory.

Westminster Abbey, the first and most compendious necro-tourist attraction, remains fascinating, as much for the writers who aren’t there as for the ones who are. (Also, it features several forgotten writers, for whom literary historians have a soft spot.) Beyond Poets’ Corner, tourists can visit any of Greater London’s Victorian cemeteries, lovely in their own right and full of departed luminaries: consult the brochures. In fact, London as a whole can be experienced as a vast mausoleum to Anglophone writers. At the St. Pancras Churchyard, situated near the British Library, tourists can view the original graves of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, which provided a setting for creepy trysts between their daughter Mary and Percy Shelley. (The actual remains of Godwin and Wollstonecraft, along with those of Mary Shelley, now reside at St. Peter’s Churchyard, Bournemouth.) Slightly less famous is Bunhill Fields, the former Dissenters’ burial ground that holds the remains of John Bunyan (of Pilgrim’s Progress fame) and William Blake. Coleridge lies in St. Michael’s Church, Highgate. Also worth a visit is Milton’s tomb in St. Giles, Cripplegate. St. Giles has grisly stories worth remembering, including the 1790 disinterment of Milton’s corpse and the subsequent circulation of his body parts on the relic market. These graves and many others one can see without leaving the metropolis.

Naturally, other writers’ graves dot the island. And then there are the graves of the diaspora—“Wave may not foam, nor wild wind sweep, / Where rest not England’s dead.” The same goes for Scotland’s dead, Wales’s dead, and Ireland’s dead. Among the most famous burial plots of exile include Italy’s Protestant cemeteries, home to many expatriate Anglophones. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and several associates (including Landor, Clough, and Fanny Trollope) rest in Florence, while Keats and Shelley both lie in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery, which has drawn devoted visitors for nearly 200 years now. Oscar Wilde can be visited in Paris’s Pere Lachaise Cemetery, along with lots of other famous artist-types. Farther afield, tourists can visit the grave of L.E.L. in Cape Coast, Ghana, where the once-beloved poet still resides despite nineteenth-century calls to repatriate her remains. In short, writers’ graves dot the globe, and for some tourists the most satisfying practice is to locate the obscure, the forgotten, or the difficult of access. One of my colleagues remembers fondly his quest to find Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in the Samoan jungle. He did so, but only after dodging a wild boar and becoming thoroughly lost.

How to get the most out of the necro-tourist experience? That’s a tricky question. Sometimes one has to overcome a sense of absurdity. And then, sometimes authors’ graves disappoint—they have trouble living up to idealized visions of the people buried there. Of course, a good deal depends upon the tourist’s preparatory knowledge, imagination, and sheer force of will. One anecdote that illustrates this caveat dates from the early 1850s, when Harriett Beecher Stowe undertook a tour of England. One May evening, she decided to visit Stoke Poges, the locale made famous by Thomas Gray’s 1751 Elegy on a Country Churchyard. After some confusion about directions, she finally found herself gazing on an ivy-covered church, complete with yew trees and “all perfect as could be.” There she and her friends recited Gray’s pathetic poem and communed with all of the mute, inglorious Miltons, only to find out later that they had been to the wrong churchyard! Stowe’s response, once she overcame her chagrin, was telling: “we could…console ourselves with the reflection that the emotion was admirable, and wanted only the right place to make it the most appropriate in the world.” Does locating the actual burial place really matter? I leave that to readers to decide.

I’ve just spent the past several days with two prominent Canadian novelists visiting places that feature in their work. The take-away message from these encounters was that both would not have been able to write their novels had it not been for access to the contents of libraries and archives. Without these resources to sharpen and animate the depiction of people and events and life, their work would not have been as accurate, significant, insightful or ‘true’.

With this experience fresh in the foreground, these words, contained in a letter recently sent to Canada’s Members of Parliament under Bibliographical Society of Canada President Janet Friskney’s signature, assume particular relevance and importance:

“LAC/BAC is Canada’s equivalent to the British Library or the US Library of Congress. The institution houses a vast array of published and unpublished documentary materials related to the history of Canada. These materials run the gamut from books, newspapers, and magazines through photographs, films, videos, art, maps and sound recordings to the records of government, organizations and private individuals. Building these holdings has been a painstaking effort that dates back more than a century. Some collections held at LAC/BAC run into the hundreds of thousands items, others into the millions. These documents illuminate Canada and its development in a multitude of ways, and serve as the raw materials out of which the chroniclers and storytellers among us build our collective memory. Failure to provide the resources to collect, protect, or provide access to Canada’s documentary heritage in an effective and sensible manner suggests a betrayal of the legislated obligations of the Library and Archives Canada Act, and of the trust that Canadians bestow when they elect individuals to serve as members of the Parliament of Canada.”

It’s not just academics and historians who will be affected by the Harper government cuts, it’s also those who recreate, re-imagine and re-define Canada for us; who think about and create versions of what it could be. In turn, it’s Canada’s ability to understand itself that’s being undermined here; this isn’t just about some dusty old documents; it’s about the capacity to know who and what we are that’s at stake.

The Gyphon Bookstore in Port Hope, Ontario has lots going for it. First there’s Bambi the store rabbit (yes, that’s Angora you’re looking at ) Second, the walls are well on their way to being decorated entirely by bookmarks. and third, pretty well every book in the place sells for under $5.00. And if for some unholy reason used books don’t happen to appeal: there’s new just around the corner at the much storied Furby House Books.

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